Tales from Faraway Faltyr

From the Slushpile: Some Kind of Way Out of Here (Part One)

In honor of Veteran’s Day, Jeremy Hicks is posting a war story from the slushpile. “Some Kind of Way Out of Here” is a Lovecraftian horror story set in the midst of the Tet Offensive of 1968. It takes a real life incident and speculates on how it would have played out if the Cthulhu Mythos was real. Stay tuned the week of Veteran’s Day for the rest of it.

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I’m posting a war story from the slushpile. I wrote this story specifically for Chaosium’s “Summer of Lovecraft” anthology, but due to technical circumstances beyond the editor’s control, it was never read. By the time I realized it was buried in their spam folder, the stories for the anthology had already been selected. I submitted it a few other places, but it has never found a home. So, I’ll publish it in installments here during the week of Veteran’s Day to remind us that war is hell and that there are veterans on all sides of a conflict.

I thank them all for their service, for they were mostly poor, unfortunate souls fighting in rich men’s wars. And in Vietnam, it was definitely a politician’s war with brave men and women on both sides caught in the madness of the Cold War era. During my research…